My friend Hugo is quoted in the Daily Collegian article about Brazilian Night. When he said “it didn’t matter if you knew how to samba or not, everyone was just having a good time”, I think he was specifically referring to Stick and me. Anyway, I’m really glad Hugo invited me, it was a fun night even though my dancing skills left something to be desired.
Minute Humor
Kristine got a cute little red-bellied newt! Like a good roommate, I devoted a lot of time and attention to naming her new pet, even though I don’t like him as much as I like Yucatan.
“How about Gingrinch?” Stick suggested.
“No way,” I told him, not mentioning that that has to be the second oldest gag in the herpetology jokebook. “Kristine names all of her critters after places,”
“What about Newton the newt? Or Beirut the newt?”
“I’m going to call him Tiny,” Kristine said.
“Tiny? Why?” I asked, walking into the oldest joke in the bio-geek book.
“Because he’s my newt.”
Andromeda
Eric has a pet mouse named Andromeda. Eric thinks she’s named after the ship’s AI on the Sci-Fi show, but I actually named her that because she was rescued from becoming food for Kristine’s snake.
Walter, the cuddly snake
Posted in New York City
Tagged Chinese life, Eric, Kristine, New York City, Rome, sci-fi
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Roman S&M
The Romans, not being familiar with Massachusetts weather, thought that spring began on February 5th. So, like most fertility rites, Lupercalia takes place in early spring, February 15th.
Young men would start out in the cave of Romulus and Remus, and sacrifice a goat there. Some sources (especially one named Alex) do say dog, but I think a goat would be a bit more appropiate since goats are frequently tied with sex by the Greeks and Romans. *cough, cough* Satyrs. Also because the word for goat-skin is “februum”, another word for Lupercalia is “dies februata”, and then the month in which the holiday occurred became Februarius, and thus our February.
After the required religious ritual and religious drinking (it is a Roman holiday after all) the young men would dress up in the bloody skins and run through the streets, hitting women with strips of goatskin. Young wives would try to get whipped because it brought fertility and could also ease childbirth pains for pregnant women.
This is alluded to the beginning of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar when he tells Calpurnia to try to get hit, but actually the Lupercalia was not terribly popular during Caesar’s reign. Suetonius writes that Augustus brought it back into popularity (because it suited the moral reforms he was trying to make with the Lex Julia).
Our Valentine’s Day just celebrates those who are coupled, but the Romans being cheerfully polytheistic, used this ceremony to honor Romulus and Remus, also Lupercus, Faunus and a little-known fellow called Februus. Poor Februus was the Etruscan god of the underworld, who somehow got himself associated with sex and flogging. That’s what happens when your followers praise you in a language isolate instead of good ol’ Indo-European. Like the rest of the underworld gods, he was associated with caves, so he was probably hanging out w/ the shades of Romulus and Remus when the drunken teenagers showed up for the sacrifice and orgy.
Love, Honor and Obey… or something.
Rachel, my friend from high school, called me last night to say she’s getting married!
Let’s analyze this sentence, ok? Rachel called Castle Von Hoffmann from the house she and her fiance own in Virginia. I love my household, but there’s a huge gap between adult life, and my constantly chaotic life of lizards and gamers.
Rachel’s probably my oldest friend, she was my very closest friend through junior high and the beginning of high school. How could someone who had all the major milestones with me be getting married? Actually, we didn’t have all the major milestones, I had my first boyfriend LONG before she did. (Who, by the way, is also married.) And I know she’s doing the right thing, she’s not rushing into it. While I have the occasional white-dress daydream, I can’t imagine the actual love, honor and obey. Did I screw up somewhere and stop maturing? Was I skipping class the day everyone else learned about committed relationships?
Rachel’s a second grade teacher now, just like she wanted to be when we were twelve. I think I wanted to be a ballerina or a computer programmer then. I’m twenty-three now and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Probably go back for more school after I finish in May. But if I’m going to be in school forever, can’t I at least be smart in daily activities, too? What good is mastering literary theory or Roman warfare if I can’t park a car and I shrink my laundry?
And if I have to be the bluestocking stereotype, can I have a cat?
Wait, that might be a little bit too complicated, but I could take good care of a nice cactus.
This Is Not Our Destiny
I’ve been seeing Marcus a lot recently. We’re going through a lot of the same stuff. He’s got a couple grad school prospects for next fall, all of which involve leaving his serious girlfriend Becky. All of my job and grad school prospects for next fall involve leaving Stick.
Meanwhile, Marcus works on-campus at Parking Services and hates his job (Obviously. You caught the part about “parking services”, right?). The entity of UMass makes regulations that sound great in theory, and change these rules on a schedule known only to themselves. And Marcus’ job is to deal with unhappy, confused students everyday. It’s quite a lot like my job, only he has to explain why your car’s gone missing and I only have to explain why we don’t carry every product known to man.
Marcus is a writer and a Stoic and when we talk about our sucky jobs in comparison to our brilliant futures in the field of classical scholarship, he says “This is not our destiny”. Which sounds kind of screwy, especially since he’s otherwise a cut-out-your-heart Stoic, but go with it.
Anyway, I just called Parking Services and said “This is not our destiny.”
But the boy who’d picked up wasn’t Marcus.
There really is no suave way to recover from that. “Uh, hey, sorry, could you leave Marcus a message from Meg that says ‘This is not our destiny?’ Thanks!”
Another Book Report
So there’s a new book out called He’s Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, and it’s a dating advice book. I read The Rules when it came out, notice I said “read”, not “committed to memory”, “bought” or even “left the bookstore with”. Let me defend The Rules as a great way to manipulate yourself into a marriage with a fellow who’s not smart enough to see through you. Anyway, He’s Just Not That Into You follows the question-and-answer formula for a relationship advice book (have I actually read enough relationship advice books to spot a formula?). In each chapter, women send in their cliched problems, author Liz commiserates, and author Greg gives his tough-love answer. It goes kind of like this:
“I went out with this boy but he didn’t call again/made me pick up the check/didn’t kiss me goodnight/took off during dinner/actually has a girlfriend/wanted to have sex/didn’t want to have sex/changed his number. What’s going on?”
Or:
“I slept with the boy but he says he can’t be together because he’s really busy at work/really busy at school/can’t leave his wife right now/is in rehab/has trust issues/is still wounded from his divorce/marriage/parents. What’s going on?”
And the answer is always:
“Because he doesn’t like you.”
This book is brilliant and I wish I’d thought of it first.
A New Resident of Castle Von Hoffmann
This is what Yucatan, Kristine’s newest frog, looks like! She says he got him from a reptile show but I think she stole him off a “Come to the rainforest” poster. This is why he is my favorite animal in the house:
Even though he has orange hands, red eyes and purple legs, he does a very good leaf impression.
Unlike a certain gecko I won’t mention, he did not walk all over my sandwich.
Unlike a certain bunny I won’t mention, he did not pee on my lap.
Unlike a certain snake I won’t mention, he does not need to eat cute little mice.
Unlike certain humans I won’t mention, he never suggests that I should leave some hot water for other people.
It Was 7 Minutes After Midnight
Well, it turns out that not all stream-of-consciousness writing is miserable allusions to Irish politics.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is the journal of Christopher Boone, a teenage boy with high-functioning autism, or Asperger’s syndrome. Not that he ever states that — Christopher is the most unreliable narrator imaginable. He tells readers what he considers important, when he thinks of it, with little asides for number problems or mention that he needed to “do groaning” until he felt better.
The chapters are headed by prime numbers, and in case you’ve forgotten about those, Christopher tells you how to find them. His method is to write down every number in the world and then cross off the multiples of two, of three, of four, of five, etc. until you have only the prime numbers left.
Throughout the novel, Christopher is constantly conscious that he is writing a book. Some find this hard to accept in fiction, but I like when the person telling you a story knows it’s a story. Much better than a creepy omniscient narrator who goes head-hopping.
The actual plot is secondary to the amazing narration, and hinges on a few dramatic events — so dramatic that they are soap-opera staples. You’ll only notice this later, since Haddon’s narrator makes the most monumental events extremely believable. I don’t want to give away any more, so here’s the opening:
<align=right> It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears’ house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The points of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this.
Final rating: As good as Morrowind.
Posted in Books, Western Mass
Tagged Book review, Books, fiction, Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
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A Buggy Game
Yesterday when we were at the store, Stick wanted to play X Bugs, which was described to me as goofy tiddlywinks. We set up play, which consists of picking sides (I’m the Russian bug army), and throwing stickered tiddlywinks down on the felt covered table.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t actually tell the difference between a Harvester and a Worker. In the world of Meg, items are distinguished mostly by their color. It’s usually neat, I can identify almost every plant in our overgrown “garden” by variating shade of green. Sadly, I unable to articulate these and am confused in a household where people identify based on shape.
Meg: The weeds are palish inside-watermelon-rind green.
Rational housemate: Are they pointed or round leaves?
Meg: Um, let me check.
The object of the game is to flip my pieces — green with dark green bugs — on to Stick’s, which were black with red bugs, and eliminate them. Simple enough. But certain indistinguishable pieces have special abilities or drawbacks. It was a lot like when I used to download arcade games in Japanese. Is this good or bad? I died, I guess three reds in a row was bad… unless that was good and it was the yellows that were bad?
Suddenly these words started to come out of my mouth. Big problem. I am almost always thinking incredibly mean, sarcastic thoughts. My nature is not sweet and light, but unkind and cutting. I hover at a ratio of three or four nasty mental comments for each decent thing I say. When I do say something pleasant, I require hours of mental back-patting, and I can pull these events up later, as if the time I didn’t tell someone to shove it is a shining example of my great moral fortitiude. But I’ve hidden my unstoppably bitchy side from Stick for six months or so now, so I’m not about to slip up over a game of insect tiddlywinks.
I really shouldn’t bash X Bugs to the boy who played Blokus with me. Blokus, if you’re not lucky enough to have played it, is four-player horizontal Tetris/Scrabble. (Is it just me, or does “four person horizontal sound dirty? It is just me? Oops.) If the chance to take over the board and screw over your friends isn’t enough, Blokus also has the final element of a perfect boardgame: brightly colored, easily identifable pieces.
And Stick, who really is the Best Boyfriend Ever, played quite a few rounds with me this weekend at our friends Bill and Andrea’s place.
So in my calm, considered, non-bitchy opinion, I rank X Bugs as more fun than parallel parking but not as much fun as waiting for water to boil.
Posted in Game Reviews, Gaming Culture
Tagged Game Reviews, games, garden, oops, Stick
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